It is known that new enterprise data centers store ever-larger amounts of critical data that must be immediately and continuously available. To ensure continued connectivity this may necessitate multiple paths between hosts and data storage arrays. For example, this may require multiple physical connections to two or more storage processors within a storage array. This may ensure continued connectivity to the storage array even if there is a failure of a single physical connection or a storage processor.
If an array comprises two or more storage processors it is known to include host-based failover software on the attached hosts to achieve port failover in the event of a failure of a single physical connection or a storage processor. However, this approach requires each attached host to have correctly configured failover software installed. This can be expensive and extremely inconvenient.